If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful.
Faithless
“If we are faithless”--that is, untrue to the vows of our Christian profession, the faithlessness implies more than mere unbelief in any of the fundamental doctrines of the faith, such as the resurrection of the Lord or His divinity. (H. D. M. Spence, M. A.)
The unchangeableness and independence of Christ, proofs of His divinity
If you open any professed treatise on the divinity of Christ, you will find that one series of proofs is deduced from the ascription to our Lord of attributes or properties which can belong only unto God. And the words which we have just read to you from the writings of St. Paul contain, as it would seem, two instances of this kind of evidence. Amongst the characteristics of the Creator, characteristics which can never be transferred to a creature, we justly reckon unchangeableness and independence. You may learn from the context, it is of Christ, “the one Mediator between God and men,” that St. Paul affirms that “He abideth faithful,” and that “He cannot deny Himself.” And first, then, as to unchangeableness. You know that with the Father of lights “there is no variableness neither shadow of turning.” When it is said of God “He cannot change,” you should understand the phrase in its largest and most literal acceptation. We are as much borne out by reason as by revelation, in pronouncing it impossible that God should change. To suppose that He could change is to suppose that He could cease to be perfect, and we need not prove to you that an imperfect God would be no God at all. There is no passage in the Bible in which this unchangeableness is more distinctly ascribed to the Father than it is in our text to the Son. “He cannot,” He is not able to “deny Himself.” Such language could never have been applicable to Christ had He not been God. There is nothing in the nature of a creature, not even though it come nearest in glory and greatness to that unchangeable Being from whom its existence was derived--there is nothing, I say, in the nature of a creature which renders it impossible that it should deny itself. Now, unchangeableness is not the only attribute of Godhead which is here ascribed to Christ; a little examination will show you that independence is equally ascribed. Sublimely as God is enthroned on His own essential majesty, He depends neither on angel nor on man for one jot of His honour, for one tittle of His happiness. And you are to observe that this independence which is necessarily to be reckoned among the Divine attributes is actually incommunicable; that is, it can belong only to God, and cannot be imparted to what is finite and created. And yet the mode of expression adopted by the apostle in our text appears to me strictly to imply that the being of whom he speaks is independent. “If we believe not,” what then? will it make any difference to Christ? must His purposes be altered, as though to meet an emergency? must the terms of His gospel be lowered, so as to square better with our prejudice or our infidelity? Nothing of all this. “If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful: He cannot deny Himself.” Everything will follow the same course; we may turn the willing ear, or the deaf; we may march in the train of the Captain of our salvation, or we may fight under the banner of the apostate. “Yet He abideth faithful”; or, as the verse is paraphrased by an old prelate of our church, “He loveth nothing by it; the misery and the damage is ours; but for Him, He is the same that He was, whatever become of us.” Now, we are very anxious that whenever a portion of Holy Writ on which we are meditating contains any indirect testimony to the divinity of Christ, such testimony should be carefully worked out and set before you in its strength and in its simplicity. And there is no doctrine to which there is a greater assemblage of these indirect testimonies than there is to the divinity of Christ. Passages occur in almost every leaf of the New Testament, which do not indeed assert the divinity of Christ, which do not even seem to allude to the divinity of Christ, but which, nevertheless, are stripped of aft force, yea, of all sense, if doubt be thrown on the divinity of Christ. In reading the Epistles we seem reading the writings of men who never thought of the divinity of Christ as of a questionable or debateable thing. They buckle on the armour of controversy when the sir, fatness of the human race is to be demonstrated, and when the method of justification is to be vindicated, and when the errors of Judaising teachers are to be exposed; but, except in one or two instances, there is nothing that looks like controversy in regard to the divinity of Christ. And we attach the greatest possible worth to this indirect kind of evidence, a specimen of which we have found in our text. Certain doctrines there may be, which rest only on certain passages, and which consequently we should find a difficulty in establishing if those passages were removed. But this cannot be affirmed of the main pillar of our faith, the divinity of Christ. The doctrine rests not upon isolated passages; leave us a page of the New Testament, and I think you will have left us proof of Christ being God. And now let us take a different view of the text. It contains much both of what is alarming and what is encouraging. The threatenings and the promises of Christ, each of these, as we may learn from the text, will take equal effect, whether we ourselves believe them or whether we disbelieve them. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
Eternal faithfulness unaffected by human unbelief
I. The sad possibility, and the consoling assurance--“If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful.” I must take the sad possibility first--“if we believe not,” and I shall read this expression as though, first of all, it concerned the world in general, for I think it may so be fairly read. If mankind believe not, if the various classes of men believe not--yet He abideth faithful. The rulers believed not, and there are some that make this a very great point. They said concerning Jesus, “Have any of the rulers believed on Him?” Well, if our greatest men, if our senators and magistrates, princes and potentates, believe not--it does not affect the truth of God in the smallest conceivable degree--“yet He abideth faithful.” Many, however, think it more important to know on which side the leaders of thought are enlisted, and there are certain persons who are not elected to that particular office by popular vote, who nevertheless take it upon themselves to consider that they are dictators in the republic of opinion. However, we need not care because of these wise men, for if they believe not, but becloud the gospel, yet God abideth faithful. Yes, and I venture to enlarge this thought a little more. If the rulers do not believe, and if the philosophical minds do not believe, and if in addition to this public opinion, so called, rejects it, yet the gospel is still the same eternal truth.
2. Now, having spoken of our text as referring to the world in general, it is, perhaps, a more sorrowful business to look at it as referring to the visible church in particular. The apostle says, “Though we believe not,” and surely he must mean the visible church of God.
3. Once more I will read the text in a somewhat narrower circle. “If we believe not”--that is to say, if the choicest teachers and preachers and writers believe not, yet He abideth faithful. Here, then, is the fearful possibility; and side by side with it runs this most blessedly consoling assurance--“He abideth faithful.” Jesus Christ abideth: there are no shifts and changes in Him. He is a rock, and not a quicksand. He is the Saviour whether the rulers and the philosophers believe in Him or refuse Him, whether the Church dud her ministers are true to Him or desert Him. And as Christ remains the same Saviour, so we have the same gospel. And as the gospel is the same, so does Christ remain faithful to His engagements to His Father.
II. A glorious impossibility with a sweet inference that may be drawn from it. “He cannot deny Him self.” Three things God cannot do. He cannot die, He cannot lie, and He cannot be deceived. These three impossibilities do not limit His power, but they magnify His majesty; for these would be infirmities, and infirmity can have no place in the infinite and ever blessed God. Here is one of the things impossible with God--“He cannot deny Himself.” What is meant by that?
1. It is meant that the Lord Jesus Christ cannot change as to His nature and character towards us, the sons of men.
2. His word cannot alter.
3. He cannot withdraw the salvation which He has presented to the sons of men, for that salvation is indeed Himself.
4. And then the atonement is still the same, for that, too, is Himself: He has by Himself purged our sins.
5. And the mercy-seat, the place of prayer, still remains; for if that were altered He would have denied Himself, for what was the mercy-seat, or propitiatory, that golden lid upon the covenant ark? What was it but Christ Him self, who is our propitiatory, the true mercy-seat?
6. And here is another sweet thought: Christ’s love to His Church, and His purpose towards her cannot change, because He cannot deny Himself, and His Church is Himself.
7. Nor will any one of His offices towards His Church and people ever fail.
8. Now, my last word is about an inference. The text says, “If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful”: it runs on that supposition. Take the other supposition: Suppose we do believe. Will He not be faithful in that case? And will it not be true that He cannot deny Himself? (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The Divine immutability
Weak as man is, all powerful as God is, there is one thing which weak man can do, and which Almighty God cannot do. Man can pass his word, and almost in the same breath can call it back again. God, on the other hand, cannot promise or denounce a thing without fulfilling it to the very uttermost. This is a doctrine which there are few el us, I fear, who thoroughly believe. Whilst there are many of us who are making light of the threatenings of God, and flattering ourselves with the profane idea that they will never be fulfilled, there are others again who are equally distrustful of God’s promises. If we trust God in spirituals we mistrust Him perhaps in temporals. If we believe Him as the God of grace, we sometimes seem to doubt Him as the God of providence. If we trust Him for eternity, we are half afraid to rely on Him for time. (A. Roberts, M. A.)
Faith in God ennobles reason; unbelief degrades reason
1. Faith in God involves, in its very act, a rational appreciation of evidence. Hence it is distinct from credulity, which is belief without evidence; from scepticism, which is unbelief, though evidence is at hand; and from infidelity, which is the rejection of evidence sufficient to convince. In each of these there is either the neglect or the abuse of the reason, and a consequent injury to the intellectual as well as to the moral powers of the soul. But faith in God, distinct from all these, is belief on sufficient evidence.
2. Faith in God promotes the highest exercise of reason, because also it rests upon the most substantial and durable foundation. If, in the investigation of natural truth, it is philosophical to seek for first principles, it is equally or more so to require them in the reception of revealed truth. Now to have faith in God is to rest on first principles, and to build up knowledge and hope on a sure foundation.
3. Faith takes in the sublimest truths, and the widest circle of thought.
4. If this be our philosophy we shall not stumble at miracles. While faith admits the miracles as facts, reason co-operates with faith by showing that they are wise and good. Moreover, the great first miracle displayed in the world’s creation, which we receive by faith, prepare the mind for all other miracles, however stupendous they may be (Hebrews 11:1).
5. Guided by the philosophy of faith, we shall not stumble at mysteries. For what are mysteries? Grand truths as yet but palatally revealed; the first syllables of some vast volume to be unrolled hereafter.
6. Nor at alleged contradictions between science and revelation. We are free to admit that there are difficulties, real difficulties, between science and revelation; and there may be even greater still. What then? We are but in the position in which patriarchs and prophets were placed for ages.
7. Supported by the philosophy of faith, we shall not faint under the delay of promised good. “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years,” etc. (W. Cooke, D. D.)
Faith and the gospel
I. Unbelief is a sin. What more in the holy letters checked, condemned? Does not Christ dissuade from it? His apostles forbid it? and God everywhere commands the contrary? May not arguments be produced, if any doubt of it, to confirm, ratify it?
II. A man may not have faith yet possess the Gospel. To try the truth of thy faith, let these two rules following be well weighed of thee: First, he who hath faith receives Christ, as the wife does her husband. He will have Him and no other from this time forward, for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health, according to God’s holy ordinance, till (and after that) death shall them part. In the second place, how does thy faith work? Faith, if true and sound, will embrace Christ, purify the heart, lift up the wing of thy soul and cause thee to soar on high. It will do what God enjoins, though it strip him of reputation, promotion, life and all.
III. In preaching the word ministers are not to exclude themselves.
IV. The Lord is faithful.
V. The Lord is without change. (J. Barlow, D. D.)